Yes, you can disable auto-loading. It's actually turned off by default when you roll your kernel, it's just that all the major distros enable it.

All the old USB drives were like that. I have a 32MB one sitting here on my desk with a write-enable switch on it. About the time they started coming out with the 64-128MB drives is when they stopped putting those switches on them.

The early small ones (4-16MB) were considered to be larger floppies. Floppies had the little tab on them to prevent writing, so the USB drives did too. Once they started becoming more popular, and the capacities started rising, the manufacturers realized they were being used more as a supplement to storage than as a traditional floppy disk. So they started removing the write switch. There are still some made today with that switch, but they are really expensive (considered a premium feature, so they can charge 50% more).

"Ruining the economy". You're funny. D2 hasn't had an economy for 10 years. The day the first guy figured out how to dupe sojs, it ended. And hell, even before that when people realized you could gamble for sojs by having the other unique rings in your stash. D2 and economy are two words that don't go together.

Robosport. I haven't seen that mentioned in years. I still have the box, manual, and floppy disks sitting here. That game was amazing fun, and was the first turn based game I ever saw. I later found xcom, and never really went back. It was a blast though.

Man, I remember that. It was a 30MB download, which didn't take too long on dual-channel ISDN. It was a huge change coming from Eudora, but was actually quite functional. I think within a few days of starting to use it I never went back to Eudora again.

Take a look at Google Voice + Android. All the phone numbers on a single phone that you could ever possibly want, and 'free' if you live in Canada/USA.

None of the new ones are quite as open, but there are several that are considered easier to work with. I believe the g2, mytouch 4g, and the desire are the easiest ones, but I don't have any of them so I can't say for sure. All of them have custom roms, and while they don't come unlocked like the nexus, they are quite simple to get root on.

You may want to reconsider Android when you're looking at a new phone in the future. I was in a very similar situation to you last year; I was looking for a new phone, and was looking very closely at Symbian. I had an older Nokia for a few years that I really liked, and so Symbian was my obvious first choice when looking for a new phone. However, the number of choices for Android, and the linux kernel are what finally made me chose Android. I couldn't find a Nokia phone with the hardware and form factor that I wanted, but was able to find an Android phone that was almost perfect.

It does everything you've listed as well, even sharing the Internet connection via wifi if you so desire. I use the usb tether when I'm on the train, so as to keep my phone nicely charged while playing Eve. However, it's as simple as touching a single button to toggle on/off the wifi hotspot as well, so if I like the people I'm sitting with I usually offer to share the Internet connection with them so they can use their laptops online too. I don't even have to unplug it from the laptop to do so, so I'm still getting my usb tether+charge too.

However, a huge warning. If you do consider Android in the future, make sure you get a phone that doesn't have a vendor's crapware layered on top of it. Some of them (AT&T is the worst in the US) will cripple your phone to the point that you pretty much have to wipe it and reinstall with a clean custom OS. That is usually pretty simple, but it can be a hassle for non-technical users. The best solution is to just purchase an Android phone that isn't crippled from the start, but it's an easy trap to fall into if you're not aware of it before buying.

Your mistake was buying a Motorola phone. Next time, stick with a vendor that doesn't add their own crapware on top of Android. The original Nexus One was good, presumably the upcoming Nexus S will be the same.

That doesn't help with your current phone, but luckily that's a relatively easy process to fix, assuming a basic level of computer competency. You found Slashdot, so hopefully that means you fit the requirements.

There are two ways of fixing your problem, the easy way and the good way. The easy way:

Get root
adb uninstall /path/to/shit/application.apk
adb remove /path/to/shit/application.apk

Hopefully there aren't any other processes that require that apk, or they'll break. Seeing as how you're using a phone with all kinds of vendor crap dropped on top of the os, and custom 'motoblur', etc you may have a problem. Hopefully it works.

The good way:
Go to xda, install a custom rom (I use cyanogen, but it doesn't look like there is one for the droid 2)
You can try this one, looks like it's pretty close to stock: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=851623
Congratulations, you now have an Android device that isn't crippled by vendor bloatware. Hopefully you've learned your lesson for the future.

Once Winamp was bought out by aol, it went to hell. Or I should say, development basically stopped, and the adware junk you're seeing started showing up. It's still useful, but it hasn't changed in the last 15ish years.

Civ 4 only really shines once you get the Beyond The Sword expansion. It still could use a little polish, but that one fixed most of the major bugs and performance problems with the original release and the first two expansions.

You're missing a key one: World of Tanks. Hilarious fun, and 'free' (micro transactions).

I'll second that other person, and say that the *only* way to do Gyala is via the backdoor route. The only reason to ever follow the normal route is if you want the challenge; the backdoor route is the best way to go. Quite easy in fact once you've done it a few times and know the route. Far easier than the Eternal Grove actually, because it's entirely possible to do it solo (with npcs).

MSSE isn't perfect. But it's simple, free, and good enough for many people. Some people report issues with it, but every AV product has issues of some sort with a particular os rev/application/hardware/user combination.

I certainly would recommend it over any paid one for a home user. For an enterprise, support is typically what you're paying for, and there is no enterprise support for MSSE, so you'd want a different product.

Kind of late replying, but you won't be able to do what you want unfortunately. Well, you can but it requires the more expensive active DP DVI adapter, not the passive ones you're looking at. The reason is that the video card only has 2 TMDS units, which are needed for DVI. DP doesn't use that piece anymore, which is why they can hang so many monitors off it.

There were rumors that AMD was going to release some inexpensive ($30 instead of $100) active adaptors, but I don't know if they ever came out.